


Screwball

by fallen_woman



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ballad of Ken and Allison wouldn't fill a page. Fitful romance, written in the margins of composition notebooks. Takes place over the entire MM run, so <b>spoilers for Season 3 finale</b>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Screwball

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [mad men](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/mad+men)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **this just in** _

Title: Screwball  
Fandom: Mad Men  
Pairing: Ken/Allison  
Rating: PG  
Word Count: ~1,300  
Summary: The ballad of Ken and Allison wouldn't fill a page. Fitful romance, written in the margins of composition notebooks. Takes place over the entire MM run, so **spoilers for Season 3 finale**.

A/N: And again, my obsession with tertiary female characters continues. This is a shamelessly fluffy excuse for writing snappy dialogue. Please forgive.

  
She had a neutrally pretty face and an easy, apple-cheek smile, so he decided to give it a shot. After the Belle Jolie crew departed with their samples, he sidled up to her desk.

"Find something you like?"

Allison—that was her name, right?—shook her head and didn't slow her typing. "Too many colors. It was overwhelming."

"Figures." At this distance, her perfume was just barely perceptible. "First, you want more choices, then you complain about too many of them."

She pursed her lips, which were painted a particularly vicious red. "I'd like to think that I match with everything."

He wrote that line down in his pocket diary, in between his 1 and 2 p.m. meetings. In retrospect, Ken thinks, there might have been an ad campaign in that. But Peggy talked to Rumsen, and Rumsen put her on the account, and Peggy became a copywriter and got fat.

Funny how choices work out.

**********

Two weeks after election night, he asked her out to the movies.

"I promised Lucille I'd help her with some craft project or other," Allison said, folding her scarf into her purse. "She did cover for me yesterday, so I owe her." Ken frowned and tried to remember whether she was good at lying.

"So you'd rather spend your Friday night playing with glue and safety pins than with me?" The surge of irritation in his voice surprised him. She wasn't even his first choice.

"I don't know." He nearly cut himself on her halfway smile. "Safety pins have multiple uses."

"You've been hanging around Joan too often," he said and stalked off to Kinsey's office before she could retort. When he dropped by his desk to pick up his briefcase, there was a typed note folded in thirds, tucked through the handles.

_There's nothing good in theaters right now. I like adventure. Like Dickens, but not boring._

They finally went to the movies in December — _Village of the Damned_. She screamed three times, but didn't grab his arm. Afterward, they got black coffee and milkshakes. At the threshold of her apartment, she kissed him on the corner of the mouth and wished him a good night. On the taxi ride home, Ken put his elbow to the dirty window and thumbed his bottom lip, wondering why he didn't feel gypped.

**********

"I'm going to the ancestral home in Vermont this weekend," he said on their third date. "Want to come with?"

Allison's face froze (not a good liar, Ken confirmed). She prodded her penne. "What's the occasion?"

"Mother's birthday." He downed the rest of his water glass. "You'll get to eat butter cake and watch her envy your weight."

"I don't know—well, that's not true." She placed a hand on her own water glass, rubbing the rim with her index finger. "I can't."

"We've been having a good time." That, he could say with absolute confidence. "Why not make it official?"

"Because, Mr. Cosgrove, if things go badly, it'll be harder to walk away."

"Why are you assuming they'll go badly?"

Allison went silent and pulled her hands into her lap. Ken lit a cigarette, to give her more time.

"My parents own a farm," she said slowly, "and it's not the Vermont kind." At his bemused expression, she added: "I didn't go to Columbia."

"To be fair, no girl has." Flexing his wrists, he resisted the urge to reach across the table for her. "Come on. I'll write terrible things about you until you give in."

She looked at his shirtfront, then up at the weak lights. "I'm not going to give in," she said, and even as Ken noted the sad tilt of her neck, he resolved to never, never write about this moment.

**********

They spent the rest of 1961 and half of 1962 pirouetting around each other at office parties. In June, Allison left SC for a week — visiting her relations in Wisconsin, he learned from Hildy. She came back wearing an updo like a shield and a necklace with a teardrop clock pendant.

To test a theory, he stopped her in the hallway. Tugging the necklace lightly, where the chain touched the edge of her collar, he asked her what time it was. In response, she coolly removed his hand and moved around him, her olive crepe suit rustling at every step.

So, now she had a steady with questionable taste in jewelry. Good for her. He poured himself an extra drink at lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon flying paper cranes into the wall.

When Joan resumed regular office manager duties and moved Allison to Draper's desk, he realized the real reason for the tighter hair and sleeker dresses. She had been angling for that spot ever since Jane had left for graying pastures. Better pay, an opportunity to impress the notoriously implacable ad man by virtue of not fucking the boss. If she did well, a shot at becoming office manager herself, once Joan got married. Not bad at all.

"Congratulations," he grinned at her on his way in. "You swung that like a champ."

Allison smiled back. "Joan wanted a more — reputable secretary for Mr. Draper. Actually, the wardrobe was more for her benefit. She said I should buy a signature jewelry piece, something classy and subtle."

"Well, after the performance of Draper's previous girl, everything you do will be classy and subtle by comparison."

"Don't tease. You _liked_ Jane."

"Well, I guess I didn't like her enough."

"I guess not." She pretended to scope the room, then lowered her voice. "Do you think Cooper's still available?"

"Wouldn't your steady be scandalized?"

Her laughter faded, and she looked contemplative. "He would." Briefly, her hand hovered at the necklace pendant before the phone rang, ending the conversation.

Ken hated being right.

**********

In high school, Ken ran track and field. He did the 200-metre sprint (there was some joke there about avoiding commitment), and in the mornings he would get up in winter darkness to lap the track with a fervor that he would never apply to anything else ever again, writing included. Flying in silent footfalls. Doubled over hands on knees afterward, the breath reeving from his lungs. That's how he first got into smoking in college—the visual of clouds streaming from his lips, like he was 14 in Burlington all over again.

That was what he wanted to say to Allison at the farewell party, as she lolled back on his lap and he nudged her shoulder with his chin and she asked if he was going to chase her again.

"I'll chase you all you want," he said before the rip-screams-splatter hit, and it all went to Iwo Jima, as Roger said.

**********

In the aftermath of the Great Escape (what was Sterling Cooper without a Sterling and a Cooper, Kinsey boozily drawled, and Ken was depressed enough to find a philosophical grace in the question), Ken made 17 phone calls and 4 soggy contingency plans before deciding to call it a day.

He stepped out his office and caught Allison heading out the lobby door. She was still crying, a little.

"Wait," he said. "Let me get my coat, and I'll come with you."

They rode the elevator down in silence. When the doors pinged open, she didn't move, and he took her hand.

"I worked so hard," she whispered as he led her out the elevator. "I didn't expect him to take me. I wouldn't have told anyone." She stared at the floor; their hands were still entwined. People with shopping bags and wet shoes swished by. "What are we going to do?"

For the first time since 9 a.m., Ken's mind cleared. "We're going to get coffee and milkshakes," he said firmly. "Then we'll go to the skating rink, and I'll ask you out because I've liked you for three years. And after you've said no or yes, I'll go to Moneypenny and tell him to keep you."

Her face flushed a sunset shade of pink, and even without lipstick, her smile was radiant. "Okay."

They walked down the avenue, his breath easing with every step.


End file.
